(Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of Mildred Culp on battling cancer. Read Part 1.)

Cancer treatment is complex, often setting up a difficult path for the patient, particularly when fatigue cuts work to one or two hours a day.

‘A GRUELING PATH’

Ewing, New Jersey’s Jason Stalnecker, owner of Whistle Building Maintenance (whistle-cleaning.com), endured six weeks of radiation every night after a day’s work in his home office. Then he was driven back home. Thereafter, chemotherapy followed for 30 weeks.

Westport, Connecticut’s Peter Green, then a sales executive at Weather.com and now owner of Workout through Cancer LLC (workoutthroughcancer.com), likely endured the most pain and discomfort as his physicians made certain that treatment for his brain cancer wouldn’t affect other parts of his body. It was “a grueling path,” he says, “from chemo to radiation.”

IMPROVED SURVIVAL RATES

“Over the past 10 years,” he said, “cancer prevention, screening, and treatments have improved survival rates dramatically. Treatments have improved dramatically as there are now immunotherapies, targeted therapies and newer forms of chemotherapy. Most of my patients are survivors.”

WORKING THROUGH

Stalnecker reshaped his business with “the right people” and remote capabilities. “I really had to adjust to how I ran the business, he recalls, “since I could not be there as much as I had been. I have clients who are still unaware of what I went through.”

Green felt responsible for his work and wanted to continue leading his team of well over 30. His ear was often glued to the telephone into the night.

I vowed to make a decisive effort to sell the commercial building where I’d written columns since 2006. This was wrenching, as my husband had had his business there, and we’d taken our dogs there to work.

The three patients also relied on invisible armor. Green became more spiritual. He was attuned to “a faith based on the mysterious interconnectedness of human energy . . . the energy that draws us together, so powerful that we are often oblivious to it.”

Stalnecker found “tremendous hope” in the surprising number of people, including his family, friends and employees, who prayed for his recovery. Almost daily, my friend from journalism regaled me with stories about life outside of my shrinking world and shared her experience with pancreatic cancer, which had stolen her husband more than a year before. Prayer chains of people I didn’t know reached up to the sky, convincing the universe that there was more for me to do in this life.

Challenged by low energy amid continuing demands, some people recovering from cancer affirm their values, then demonstrate through working that cancer will not overtake their lives.